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Seva Lamberdar
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Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by MaxEntropy_Man Fri Jan 26, 2018 8:20 pm
An interesting perspective by a dear friend:
https://thewire.in/203518/india-grateful-alauddin-khilji-thwarting-mongol-invasions/
https://thewire.in/203518/india-grateful-alauddin-khilji-thwarting-mongol-invasions/
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by ashdoc Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:08 pm
allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Jan 27, 2018 12:48 pm
ashdoc wrote:allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
Did you read the article?
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Seva Lamberdar Sat Jan 27, 2018 2:54 pm
MaxEntropy_Man wrote:ashdoc wrote:allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
Did you read the article?
It's really a bad movie drawing the unnecessary publicity.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by MaxEntropy_Man Sat Jan 27, 2018 4:03 pm
Seva Lamberdar wrote:MaxEntropy_Man wrote:ashdoc wrote:allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
Did you read the article?
It's really a bad movie drawing the unnecessary publicity.
My friend's article, the subject of this thread, is not about the movie but about history.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by confuzzled dude Sat Jan 27, 2018 8:56 pm
A bunch in the audience clapped at the end of the movie I can only hope that it was to show their appreciation for the film, not because they were proud of Padmavathi's sathi sahagaman.Seva Lamberdar wrote:MaxEntropy_Man wrote:ashdoc wrote:allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
Did you read the article?
It's really a bad movie drawing the unnecessary publicity.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by ashdoc Sat Jan 27, 2018 11:35 pm
I wish the Mongols would have won and left India because they could not tolerate India's hot weather---as the author says . That would have left India to the Hindus .MaxEntropy_Man wrote:ashdoc wrote:allauddin was the most anti hindu of all the delhi sultans . he reduced the hindus to just hewers of wood and drawers of water , according to historian b n pandey . he stripped them of all riches and dignity and made them just menial servants and trampled them under his heel . he left them with enough food just to survive and serve the muslims but little else .
Did you read the article?
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Guest Sun Jan 28, 2018 4:26 am
...Malik Muhammad Jayasi’s 16th century epic poem Padmavat is full of such glowing odes to the Delhi sultan Ala-ud-din Khalji. His preparation for war “scares the Vedic god, Indra”, his army’s march causes the “castles to quake and their lords to tremble”. These powerful eulogies for the villain of Jayasi’s masnavi often overshadow its hero, Rawal Ratan Sen of Chittor.
Although riddled with hyperbole, Jayasi’s description does justice to the powerful phenomenon that was Khalji. With his formidable military generalship and able statesmanship, he turned the small kingdom of Delhi into a full-fledged empire in the 14th century. Despite being illiterate, he devised a new taxation system so successful that its broad contours were retained by emperors who ruled Delhi well into the 20th century.
A ruler whose achievements made him fit to be a hero however became the villain of choice for some historical fiction writers of the 16th century. Apart from Padmavat, in which Khalji marches on Chittor to wrest the famed beauty Rani Padmini, another 16th century epic, Narayan Das’ Chhitai Varta, gives a fictional account of the sultan’s Deogir, or Devagiri, campaign driven by lust for the princess Chhitai.But why did 16th century writers make a monster out of one of the greatest rulers to ever grace the throne of Delhi?
If a man’s greatness can truly be measured by his enemies, then Khalji more than made the cut. His policies, as the 14th century chronicler and author of Tarikh-i-Firozshahi Zia-ud-din Barani laments, helped the Ajlaf (men of low birth) rise to positions of power while the Ashraf (men of noble birth) lost their status and authority.
Khalji’s taxation system broke new ground by fixing the land tax at 50% of the produce for every cultivator, after carefully measuring their land.
Parallelly, Khalji dealt with contumacious and corrupt intermediaries involved in revenue collection by greatly reducing their privileges. Khots, Muqaddams, Chaudharis had been exempt from paying ghari (house tax) and charai (cattle grazing tax) from their own pockets. They would extract the amount from the cultivator over and above the state’s share. Khalji ordered them to pay on their own. Other taxes such as huquq-i-khoti and qismat-i-khoti, exacted from the cultivator by the intermediaries, were also abolished. This system, argues Barani, was put in place so that the “burden of the strong is not borne by the weak”. While this maybe an exaggeration, given Khalji’s taxation system was both heavy and regressive, abolishing additional cesses did provide minor relief to the cultivator. Khalji ensured these rules were followed by establishing an effective espionage system.
Sowing enmity
Interestingly, as the historian Ramya Sreenivasan points out, the intermediaries whose fortunes took a hit during Khalji’s reign belonged to the social group that came to be identified, 16th century onwards, as the “Rajput”. Another historian, Irfan Habib, quotes an 18th century source as noting that before the advent of Muslim rule in India, the rajas “whose descendants are called Rajputs” used to collect the land tax from cultivators, and that their lot changed drastically after Khalji established a new taxation system.
Although Khalji openly antagonised the ancestors of 16th century Rajputs, Barani recalls how the sultan’s military prowess ensured “no one dared make any babble or noise” against him. One can imagine Khalji’s adversaries being awed when he successfully repelled a series of Mongol invasions. Stemming the overwhelming tide of successful Mongol conquests from Iran to China required not only excellent military acumen but also a stable administration. After a close shave with the Mongols in 1303 AD at Siri, Khalji introduced price controls in the markets of Delhi that not only lowered prices but also brought down wages. Coupled with a steady flow of revenue to the imperial treasury, the sultan could now expand his army at a reasonable cost. This levelheaded approach worked, and he was able to defeat the Mongols in pitched battles of Amroha and Ravi.
Having saved his empire from one of the mightiest armies to have ever marched, Khalji would have been a force to reckon with in the subcontinent and beyond. Furthermore, he led a series of campaigns in the Deccan, Rajasthan and Gujarat, where kingdoms fell like ninepins before his formidable military. No Khot, Muqaddam or Chaudhari – ancestors of the Rajputs – stood a chance against Khalji while he lived.
However, in the 16th century, the Rajputs sought to salvage their hurt pride by maligning Khalji in fictional accounts – the general idea being to reduce his conquests as a madman’s pursuit of lust. Padmavat, patronised by the Rajput chieftain Raja Jagat Deva, and Chhitai Varta, funded by the Rajput warlord Silhadi Purbiya, distilled the Rajputs’ animosity for the sultan who had decimated the power of their ancestors.
Jayasi had more than one reason to choose Khalji as the villain of his story. In order to expand Khalisa lands in the Doab area – the plains between the Ganga and the Yamuna rivers whose revenue would go directly go to the imperial treasury – Khalji confiscated several grants given tax-free to religious men, including several sufis. So, Jayasi, a Sufi murid, or devotee, could not have had a better villain for his poem, a Sufi allegory.
Khalji may have been the hero of the meritorious Ajlaf who were promoted to high ranks during his reign, but history is seldom commissioned by common people. So, long after his death, Khalji was demonised in texts patronised by the Rajputs whose ancestors’ privilege had failed to get them a position in the sultan’s court. By thus distorting history, the Rajputs also bought themselves the role of the hero, if a fictionalised one. Still, as the eulogies in Padmavat testify, Khalji’s glory and achievements could not be completely negated.
https://scroll.in/article/854706/ala-ud-din-khalji-why-the-peoples-king-was-made-out-to-be-a-monster-by-16th-century-chroniclers
Although riddled with hyperbole, Jayasi’s description does justice to the powerful phenomenon that was Khalji. With his formidable military generalship and able statesmanship, he turned the small kingdom of Delhi into a full-fledged empire in the 14th century. Despite being illiterate, he devised a new taxation system so successful that its broad contours were retained by emperors who ruled Delhi well into the 20th century.
A ruler whose achievements made him fit to be a hero however became the villain of choice for some historical fiction writers of the 16th century. Apart from Padmavat, in which Khalji marches on Chittor to wrest the famed beauty Rani Padmini, another 16th century epic, Narayan Das’ Chhitai Varta, gives a fictional account of the sultan’s Deogir, or Devagiri, campaign driven by lust for the princess Chhitai.But why did 16th century writers make a monster out of one of the greatest rulers to ever grace the throne of Delhi?
If a man’s greatness can truly be measured by his enemies, then Khalji more than made the cut. His policies, as the 14th century chronicler and author of Tarikh-i-Firozshahi Zia-ud-din Barani laments, helped the Ajlaf (men of low birth) rise to positions of power while the Ashraf (men of noble birth) lost their status and authority.
Khalji’s taxation system broke new ground by fixing the land tax at 50% of the produce for every cultivator, after carefully measuring their land.
Parallelly, Khalji dealt with contumacious and corrupt intermediaries involved in revenue collection by greatly reducing their privileges. Khots, Muqaddams, Chaudharis had been exempt from paying ghari (house tax) and charai (cattle grazing tax) from their own pockets. They would extract the amount from the cultivator over and above the state’s share. Khalji ordered them to pay on their own. Other taxes such as huquq-i-khoti and qismat-i-khoti, exacted from the cultivator by the intermediaries, were also abolished. This system, argues Barani, was put in place so that the “burden of the strong is not borne by the weak”. While this maybe an exaggeration, given Khalji’s taxation system was both heavy and regressive, abolishing additional cesses did provide minor relief to the cultivator. Khalji ensured these rules were followed by establishing an effective espionage system.
Sowing enmity
Interestingly, as the historian Ramya Sreenivasan points out, the intermediaries whose fortunes took a hit during Khalji’s reign belonged to the social group that came to be identified, 16th century onwards, as the “Rajput”. Another historian, Irfan Habib, quotes an 18th century source as noting that before the advent of Muslim rule in India, the rajas “whose descendants are called Rajputs” used to collect the land tax from cultivators, and that their lot changed drastically after Khalji established a new taxation system.
Although Khalji openly antagonised the ancestors of 16th century Rajputs, Barani recalls how the sultan’s military prowess ensured “no one dared make any babble or noise” against him. One can imagine Khalji’s adversaries being awed when he successfully repelled a series of Mongol invasions. Stemming the overwhelming tide of successful Mongol conquests from Iran to China required not only excellent military acumen but also a stable administration. After a close shave with the Mongols in 1303 AD at Siri, Khalji introduced price controls in the markets of Delhi that not only lowered prices but also brought down wages. Coupled with a steady flow of revenue to the imperial treasury, the sultan could now expand his army at a reasonable cost. This levelheaded approach worked, and he was able to defeat the Mongols in pitched battles of Amroha and Ravi.
Having saved his empire from one of the mightiest armies to have ever marched, Khalji would have been a force to reckon with in the subcontinent and beyond. Furthermore, he led a series of campaigns in the Deccan, Rajasthan and Gujarat, where kingdoms fell like ninepins before his formidable military. No Khot, Muqaddam or Chaudhari – ancestors of the Rajputs – stood a chance against Khalji while he lived.
However, in the 16th century, the Rajputs sought to salvage their hurt pride by maligning Khalji in fictional accounts – the general idea being to reduce his conquests as a madman’s pursuit of lust. Padmavat, patronised by the Rajput chieftain Raja Jagat Deva, and Chhitai Varta, funded by the Rajput warlord Silhadi Purbiya, distilled the Rajputs’ animosity for the sultan who had decimated the power of their ancestors.
Jayasi had more than one reason to choose Khalji as the villain of his story. In order to expand Khalisa lands in the Doab area – the plains between the Ganga and the Yamuna rivers whose revenue would go directly go to the imperial treasury – Khalji confiscated several grants given tax-free to religious men, including several sufis. So, Jayasi, a Sufi murid, or devotee, could not have had a better villain for his poem, a Sufi allegory.
Khalji may have been the hero of the meritorious Ajlaf who were promoted to high ranks during his reign, but history is seldom commissioned by common people. So, long after his death, Khalji was demonised in texts patronised by the Rajputs whose ancestors’ privilege had failed to get them a position in the sultan’s court. By thus distorting history, the Rajputs also bought themselves the role of the hero, if a fictionalised one. Still, as the eulogies in Padmavat testify, Khalji’s glory and achievements could not be completely negated.
https://scroll.in/article/854706/ala-ud-din-khalji-why-the-peoples-king-was-made-out-to-be-a-monster-by-16th-century-chroniclers
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by MaxEntropy_Man Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:05 am
Ruchika Sharma's article reads like a puff piece on Khilji. Seshadri Kumar's limited but important point was that had it not been for Khilji the Mongols would have obliterated India root and branch.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Hellsangel Sun Jan 28, 2018 8:22 am
Russia survived. Persia survived. Anyway, enjoy the story of Temümjin.MaxEntropy_Man wrote:Ruchika Sharma's article reads like a puff piece on Khilji. Seshadri Kumar's limited but important point was that had it not been for Khilji the Mongols would have obliterated India root and branch.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by southindian Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:13 pm
This was enough, I closed the page after reading this.MaxEntropy_Man wrote:An interesting perspective by a dear friend:
https://thewire.in/203518/india-grateful-alauddin-khilji-thwarting-mongol-invasions/
At a time when most of the medieval world was laid waste by the brutality of the Mongol armies, Khilji kept India – and its culture and civilisation – safe.
What a joke
The dear friend is an internet junkie. Gift some history books to read.
I seriously doubt journalist capabilities of wire.in copy/paste people.
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Idéfix Mon Jan 29, 2018 2:34 pm
For people interested in the history of the Mongols, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series episodes called the Wrath of the Khans.
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-of-the-khans-series/
https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-wrath-of-the-khans-series/
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Hellsangel Mon Jan 29, 2018 3:49 pm
A blast from the past:
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Re: Why Allauddin Khilji deserves Indians' gratitude
by Hellsangel Mon Jan 29, 2018 8:32 pm
And if you watched the above. The princess was Sinhalese. Silly Rajputs are probably protesting over the fact she wasn't Rajput.
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